Anger as a Basis for a Sense of Self*

Ours is an angry culture. This has a direct effect on the development of personality. Many who come into our offices have been particularly warped. A patient of mine says: “The only efficacy I feel, the only worth I feel, is when I'm angry — and that's why I'm angry all the time.”

There are many forces at work to account for the pathology: the daily difficulties of getting about, getting ahead, getting fed, getting enough time to rest or to think; deprivations, both material and emotional; frustrations of the normal struggle for autonomy; and the consequent desperate struggle for the pseudo-safety of dominating.

What we live in, and live with, is a pushy, angry culture at its best, and at its worst it is savage. Personalities evolving in such circumstances, shaped by them, show serious derivative distortions of the sense of self.

The sense of self is a subjective experience, the feeling of one's own self functioning. People develop a sense of individuality, of a familiar unique being, in terms of the feelings they experience while performing, perceiving, sensing, responding, cognizing, in isolation or in interaction. The sense of “me” develops slowly, with intellectual, affective, sensory, and physical growth. The forces active in the society at large are also active in the family, though modified by the individual personalities in each family. In a family milieu which has predominantly nurtured the individual's potential for this growth, a healthy and vigorous sense of “me” evolves. Such an individual, by and large, can “cope.” Where